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18 July 2012

A Perfume Evoking the Scent of a Freshly Printed Book

We all gravitate towards smells that
might not be considered, “classically beautiful” in the perfumery lexicon. For
some people it’s the smell of an old leather armchair. For others it might be
petrol, or the smell of wet pavement. For German publisher Gerhard Steidl,
it was the scent of a “freshly printed book.”

This remark at a Wallpaper magazine
party led to a collaboration between perfumer Geze Schoen, Karl Lagerfeld, and
Steidl that created the just released “Paper Passion”, a perfume meant to smell
like a freshly printed book. Lagerfeld has designed the packaging, housing it
inside a real book with the pages cut out so the bottle can nestle within. The
pages are printed with essays on paper from the likes of Gunter Grass,
Lagerfeld, and Wallpaper editor-in-chief Tony Chambers.

Apparently designing a book perfume was
almost as challenging as writing a book itself. They wanted to keep the
ingredients to four or five components, which made it even more difficult.
Explains Schoen, ““The smell of printed paper is dry
and fatty; they are not notes you often work with.”

Paper Passion is a phenomenal idea as a
concept scent and a perfect present for any sensual bibliophiles you might have
had a hard time picking out that unique something for. It is now available in concept
stores, online, and in bookshops and perfumeries.